Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend

Success to the strongest, who are always, at last, the wisest and best.

No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.

[on Thoreau:] For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to truth itself.

Every person has his or her own vocation-talent is the call.

Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God.

There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. It is a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and continues to spin slowly in one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical varioloid of this malady?